I've been on this website for only 3 years, so maybe I'm not one to judge but...I felt like a lot of groups that are at least 3-4 years old closed down this year. (I checked the news archive as far as 2007, and yes, there were far more closures this year.)

Do you think so too?

And since I read that for one group, the appearance of manga aggregator sites like Mangafox had a large effect, I'm asking active groups: is this the same for you too?

(Personally, I'm not one for those kind of sites.)

Last edited by Aveona at 8:17 am, Dec 24 2011

I would say that this year has had more closures than usual, but not by a lot. Groups always close though, MU hasn't really been actively reporting the closure of groups until this year (and then there are those that don't really want to/bother to report their closure to MU). I can definitely see the number of closing groups rise because there seems to be a huge lack of people that are able to help out. When I had a group 3~4 years ago, I would get staff applications almost weekly, but at my current group, we've only had two new staff members in the last 4 months while we lost 4 others.

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♪MONSTARR~ will eat all your cookies and steal your bishies~♪ Φ_Φ

Time to learn Japanese, guys.

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question: arent a lot of people in the Scanlating groups japanese themselves?

if the answer is yes, then dont you think that events in Japan in 2011 might have had an effect, and that many of the groups closing might start up again later, probably under another name?

On the subject of active scanlators: I'd read their projects if they have a secure download, or even their own online readers (which, i've found, has become the norm for many of the larger groups who have web designers in their member list). If a scanlation group doesnt have either of the above, or if i cant for some reason access the chapters from the scanlators directly, then, i'm sorry, but i'm off to mangahere/mangafox or other places to read the chapters.

However, this does not mean i am unthankful. I personally try to visit as many scanlators as possible and give them a big thank you letter. I like to think that i'm helping keep them open by boosting morale, but thats probably wishful thinking.

I think the answer to that question is definitely no.

Regarding the opening questions, it is clear that volunteer application has gone down in the last year probably all of the groups which existed for several years. The rise of aggregator sites and the decrease in frequency of scanlator sites might be one of the reasons for it. However, there are people who claim that the overall number of scanlators still remains roughly the same, with new groups starting replacing old groups closing.

As for me, I don't really care. I am a scanlator and as long as I can continue scanlating (i.e. there are translations and raws of the series I want to scanlate), I'll continue to do so. Even if my group is down to its very core members and has probably not even a fifth of the volunteers it had in its peak. Even if our site is currently so broken that probably no new members can join our forum (lol).
Well, I hope those problems can be fixed, but scanlation comes first, a working, fancy site is atm only second priority.

I'm a one-man team for the most part...there isn't really a "Group", but I do get help from time to time and I am very grateful to those helpers, but when they can't help due to the real world, I do everything from cleaning to typesetting (Given, I might not be the best, but I try my hardest)...and I do post the download links on my LJ, but I also personally add the chapters on mangafox because I know that people sometimes don't want/can't download the chapters...

Lol, I just wrote something here about online manga readers not affecting scanlators...but I totally lied. It just didn't affect my own group ._.' And we're a pretty small group...

Lack of staff is a big problem for us, as well :/ Before, people did leave, but we had others applying, as well...now, they just leave >_>;;;

Also,

That is definitely not wishful thinking. I don't know about other scanlators, but I really appreciate it when people take the time to thank us, especially because of people who are constantly asking for new releases. It's nice to have someone thank you for once <:

Last edited by kkaixi at 8:03 pm, Jan 4 2012

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Divine Sanctuary

I'll second what a couple already said. It's been so hard to get people to join these days. I used to get a couple people every month that at least wanted to help out. Now, I've gone months without even one person coming up and this is me actively searching for staff. I'm not totally sure why this is, but it's defiantly affecting the groups. =/

The aggregated sites actually helped us a lot in the past. Almost half of my staff used to be active users of those sites or enlist downloaded/read from there and joined us because they liked how we worked. Then the money came in discussion and someone started a fight with these aggregated sites considering they are earning to much from their work. So a cold war started and as a result we have:
~ No promoting on the aggregated sites for the scanlators, no link to their sites, sometimes the credits and stamps are erased and the quality is reduced making the readers consider it's the scanlator's fault for the scans looking like that;
~ Huge stamps all over the pages making the reading less pleasant or sometimes even impossible to read it properly, when the stamp is all over the character's faces or text...
~ Less people that find it pleasant to scanlate under the current pressure and the though of them helping others get rich.
If you asked me I think the fault is on both sides. And unfortunately, today, if you don't have a nice site and a lot to offer on it, you will probably not be able to attract a lot of new staff.
But I'm hoping the love for manga will maintain the scanlation world alive for the years to come .

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Question to the other groups: how many of your staff that got aware of your group through online readers are still in your group and have become core members? Because the group I am working in is basically reduced to the core members that were already part of the group from the beginning. Good thing that we didn't spread ourselves too thin and picked up too many projects during that time, so that our core members now can still take care of the projects that are not finished yet.

And I can definitely see groups making the mistakes to pick up too many projects during that prime and now closing because the members are becoming more and more demotivated with the tons of projects and their inability to handle all of them.

It seems odd to me that some of your posts mention difficulties recruiting and the evils of aggregate sites. Personally, I got serious about manga after exploring aggregate sites and learned about scanlation groups from the credit pages. If it weren't for aggregate sites, I would still assume manga is for kids. I have visited many scanlation group pages out of curiosity to learn more, and thought about volunteering to help. But many websites ask you to "apply" to join and ask you to take a test before they will consider accepting your help. I came to the conclusion that there must be plenty of volunteers.

The question is a bit ambiguous. Given that 99% of leechers read on aggregators, and then a certain number of them decides to apply, can you say that it's due to aggregators? I rather think it's all because of the recruit pages that groups put in their releases. Of all the groups I know, there have been exactly 0 (zero) new recruits who found a group through an online reader without the group's own effort at recruitment.

As for why the community is degenerating, the biggest reason has been mentioned, i.e. complete disconnect between scanlators and leechers because online aggregators stuck themselves in the middle. But I would also point out that the scanlation community might've become a victim of its own success. There are so many series being scanlated now, in addition to the ones that have been scanlated in the past that can still be read, that it makes each additional series less valuable. So each new release now simply doesn't have the required value for the leechers to stir themselves off their asses to come and offer help. Or to even say thank you.

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Active translations list
Completed translations list
Dropped translations

Around 30% or so.

Now, it's only through that, before we were allowed to post on aggregate sites all sorts of recruiting topics. I got the staff for Absolute Witch and Ciel after posting in the forum dedicated to those titles a topic about the staff that we're missing for the title and asking if anyone wanted to help. I did get 2 editors and a translator.

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That's also true.

Aggregated sites have existed long before this started to happen, they were just more thankful to the scanlators in the past and did their best to redirect leechers to the scanlators' sites. In the end, if they did that it was a win-win situation for both parts. Some sites like The Evil Empire or Batot still support the scanaltors and advertise them. I heard Batot even offers revenue to the scanlators.
Grumpy, the admin of Batot, is providing raws for my group so I never dared to ask about that revenue, but I'm sure he'll give you all the informations you need if you ask him .

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I'm not a scanlator, so I don't have anything to say about current situation because I don't know it. But I'd like to point out that whenever a group closes there's a news on the site, but there are no news about new groups being set up or new projects taken on. So perhaps it's not that bad, we just hear the bad news and no good.

I'd like to point out out that though new groups are being formed, most of them by far, lack the quality the old groups provide. Not all, but some new series I've read have really below par quality.
And I'm saying this when my own group is about 3 months old.